When EU member state governments call for single market reform, remember that the European Union already has a strategy for improving the internal market. It is called the Single Market Act (SMA). Here are some background blog posts in English.

From the background posts we moved towards the individual proposals, the first ”lever” and the related key action, as well as the other actions regarding the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Here we have only made a small start in English.

Then I discussed how governments signal their commitment to and ownership of the Europe 2020 growth strategy and the Single Market Act. Our leaders move in mysterious and self-defeating ways, methinks.

From A plan for growth in Europe, Van Rompuy's Issues Paper and the Danish follow-up note it was but a short step to ask readers for ideas on how media and civil society could raise the quality of public debate about EU policy proposals above what the governments and the Council of the EU seem willing to provide:

Watching the via dolorosa of EU2020 and SMA, does anyone believe in miracles?

Ralf Grahn
EU affairs expert, speaker and lecturer

P.S. The multilingual Bloggingportal.eu already aggregates the posts from 952 Euroblogs. They represent an integral part of the emerging European online public sphere: discussion across national and linguistic borders. Most weeks you can read a light-hearted roundup of promoted posts in the Week in Bloggingportal, such as the latest one: Take us to your Commission President.

Europe is more than the old member states of the EU. The WSJ Emerging Europe blog follows economic and political developments in the new EU member states in Central Europe, as well as in Eastern European countries.

Among the Euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu you find my blog archive of more than 2,700 articles in all plus fresh news feeds: Grahnlaw (ranked fourth among political blogs in Finland), the Nordic Grahnblawg (written in Swedish) and Eurooppaoikeus (meaning European Law, in Finnish).

I write and speak about democracy and openness in the European Union, but increasingly wonder about Europe's place in the global era, with the growth strategy EU2020 and the (digital) single market as both means and indicators.